A few weeks ago, William Lind opined on 4th Generation War (4GW) coming to the US in the form of the heavily armed gangs in central California. He questioned our priorities, noting that Iraq and Afganistan may be far less troublesome issues than the developing chaos steming from these gangs (see the below article).
Last week Stratfor issued the third part of a special report on securing our southern border: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091125_securing_border_challenges_us_and_mexico_part_3. This 4-1/2 minute video summarizes both the present status of our efforts (heavily constrained by manpower issues, another impact of mid-East warfare) as well as some of the policy constraints. It looks like we have chosen a technical solution (walls, cameras, etc.) and perhaps lost the men-on-the-ground approach. One of the scariest points was that the Border Patrol doesn’t fly nights or weekends!
While Al Queda is pretty ineffective these days, their real successors may be bred in the slums of both Mexico and the US Southwest.